


If you still want me, please forgive me

by jperalta



Category: I Am Not Okay with This (TV 2020)
Genre: Abuse, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Blood, Child Abuse, Domestic Violence, Family Issues, Food Issues, Panic Attacks, Recreational Drug Use, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:15:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23384383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jperalta/pseuds/jperalta
Summary: Stan's father scares the crap out of him. Yet he doesn't leave. Why doesn't he leave? How can he when his father is the only family he has left?Stan gets slapped then punched in the eye by his father after coming back from the party with the car.***Everyone at work the next day asks about what happened, and lying makes him more and more anxious. Syd is the only one who figures out the truth.// Please always let me know if there are any additional tags that should be added. //
Comments: 12
Kudos: 86





	1. Chapter 1

Stan walked up to the front door of his house, limbs shaking as they always did whenever he came home, terrified to know what was waiting for him on the other side of the door. He tried to take in a deep breath, but could feel his lungs collapsing inside of him. There was sweat forming on the top of his head, and nothing had even happened yet. He gripped the doorknob in his shaking, clammy hand, then twisted it as slowly as he could as he gently pushed his shoulder against the door and let himself in. In the front room he was greeted by the familiar scent of beer and spiced rum, and immediately it filled him with nausea. He tried to push down the panic building in his chest, but he couldn’t stop it. He could never stop it. This is how it would always be.

Then his father swung from around the corner, and his face was enough to send Stan further down the spiral. He tried to contain the fact that he was nearly hyperventilating, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t move his legs either. He could only stand there, waiting, staring at a crack in the floor. 

“What’s wrong with you?” His father bellowed. “What did you do to the fucking car?”

His voice was like poison flowing into Stan’s ears and Stan couldn’t bring himself to respond. He focused more on the floor, and saw the smallest spider run across his shoe, into the crack and then under the floorboard. He wished he could disappear too. The wind was blowing hard outside and he wished it would tear the roof off of the house and carry him away. His father walked closer to him and he could feel his own anxiety rising, rising like it always did when he was home, when his father was here.

“I haven’t even done anything yet,” he said, and when Stan blinked up to look at him he could see a smile on his face as he muttered the word _yet._ It was all so inevitable, and he could never escape it. He was too scared to do anything, too horrified at the idea of losing the only member of his family that he had left. 

His father walked towards him slowly, and when he got close Stan found that he had stepped back too far and his body slammed against the wall. He flinched away from it. Everything was so startling.

“You’re such a fucking idiot,” his father spat. He reached out and put a hand on Stan’s cheek, and Stan could feel the panic coursing through him, could feel his chest quickly rising up and down with every passing second. _Breathe_ , he tried to tell himself. But it didn’t work. Of course it didn’t work. As his father said, he was a fucking idiot. Stan felt his whole body tense even more as his father wiped a tear away from his cheek. “Crying already,” he muttered. 

He withdrew his hand, and Stan tried hard to not faint. His father turned his back to him for a moment, and for one stupid second Stan thought maybe he would just walk away. Maybe this would be the end. Maybe that touch actually meant something. And he hated himself for still believing that maybe his father still loved him, that he still was capable of treating him tenderly without any catch, touching him without it being a threat.

Then his father turned back around quickly, and with the turn came a hard back-handed slap, causing an immediate sting as he felt the blood rush to his cheek. Stan stood there in shock. He was somehow still always shocked. He cursed himself for feeling that way. More tears came to his eyes. He stole a look at his father who was smiling at him - a lopsided smile that sent fear rattling through his whole body. He stared at his father and tried to find a trace of love in his face, something that he could reason with, something that would make all of this worth it. But all he saw was stone. And with that smile plastered on his face, his father reared his arm back and Stan closed his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. 

As soon as the words were out of his lips, the blow came to his eye. His head slammed into the wall and he could feel his brain rattle around inside of his skull. He wouldn’t be surprised if one of these days he got a bad concussion. Maybe that would be the day his father would stop. Or maybe he’d just keep going until Stan died. Maybe that would be better for the both of them. 

His head began to ache as he felt the cold wind blowing in from the door his father had disappeared out of, the sound of a truck rattling down the road into the storm. The pain in his head began to take over and he felt a horrible weight in his chest. He brought his balled up fists to his face and let himself shrink against the wall, falling to the ground as the anger and confusion continued to form inside of him. Surely this couldn’t be love. But it was what he knew. He drew in quick and heavy breaths as fast as his body would let him, but it wasn’t helping him. After a particularly large breath, Stan let out a scream - something filled with as much rage as he could push into one breath. Then after the scream he felt hollow, empty, unloved, and alone. He pulled his legs up to his chest, curling himself up as much as possible, and pressed his face into his knees as he let himself cry as hard as he could manage.

~

A few hours later, after he had iced his face and smoked a few joints, Stan had finally fallen asleep. The sound of the truck returning woke him up for a moment, but he had been sleeping so heavily that he fell back asleep. But after a few more moments, he was awakened again after hearing heavy breathing come from his doorway.

“Stan? Are you awake?” His father asked in a tone too soft for Stan to recognize. He made sure his eyes were still squeezed tight, and that his breaths were slow enough that his father would think he was still sleeping. He hoped that would make him leave. 

Instead, he heard footsteps approaching his bed, and his heart rate began to escalate again. _Please, just let me sleep_. He felt his father sit on the edge of his bed, and he came so close to opening his eyes. But after a few seconds, his father reached out, slowly brushed his fingers against Stan’s bruised eye, then stood up, left his room and went upstairs. Stan felt more confused than ever. He let the tears he had again been holding back out of his eyes. His stomach flipped over and over, and when he was sure his father wouldn’t be able to hear anymore, he threw his body over towards the toilet and let himself get sick.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone at work the next day asks about what happened, and lying makes him more and more anxious. Syd is the only one who figures out the truth.

The next morning, Stan woke up several hours before he had to in order to get to work on time. He couldn’t sleep. There was a pulse in his forehead and a sickness still looming in his stomach. He had been so anxious to get out of the house before his father woke up that he had quickly showered then drove to the bowling alley and parked in the empty lot, then let himself fall back asleep for a few hours in his car.

When he woke up for the day, he looked at his face in the rearview mirror, and saw the purple spots around his eye along with a small cut over his forehead. He tried not to cry again, but it was hard. At least his father could have had the decency to punch him somewhere that he could easily hide, like usual. But no, for something as big of a mess-up as banging up the car, he had deserved a punch right to the face. He stared at himself more. _Stop crying, you fucking idiot_. He tried to fix his hair so it fell over his eye but it didn’t work out the way he wanted it to, and it made him feel worse. He curled his fingers up into fists again and pressed his nail into his palm as hard as he could until he felt something wet. “Shit,” he whispered to himself as he grabbed a napkin and pressed it against his now-bleeding hand. He caught his reflection again. “This is why you deserve this.”

He sat in his car, listening to music and smoking, for a few hours before he finally had to go into work. And the first thing his boss asked wasn’t “how are you,” but instead was “dude, what the fuck happened to your eye?” 

The abruptness of the question sent panic through Stan’s body, and he felt his vision start to go as he frantically blurted out, “door.” His boss gave him a look. “I ran into a door.” He tried to sound less out of breath, and wished his boss would just look away from him, pretending she hadn’t seen anything. He shoved his shaking fists into his pockets. “It was an accident,” he said, trying not to let himself get so emotional. But he couldn’t manage it. And then each coworker or customer who stepped over that line and asked him what happened made him feel worse and less in control and more on display.

There was a lull in people coming and going, and Stan found himself zoning out into his own mind. _Fucking idiot, fucking idiot_. He stared down at his knuckles and watched as they turned white from gripping the countertop so hard. He gripped tighter as if he was willing the wood to break in his fist. He closed his eyes and he could see his father’s face, then his own face, beaten to a pulp, red and purple bruises all over the place. His heart rate was increasing. The anger and anxiety was flowing freely through his entire body.

Then he felt a hand on his arm and his father’s face flashed in front of him again. He flinched away and put his hands up in front of his face. _Please stop, I love you_. 

“Stan?”

He opened his eyes, and saw that it was clearly not his father, just another coworker coming in for the start of their shift. Stan blinked a few times and stared at his hands, trying to remember where he was.

“Have you gone on break yet?” The coworker, Jane, asked. 

Stan looked at her, desperately wanting to bring himself back to reality. He swallowed a few times, feeling how dry his throat was. “No,” he croaked out. “It’s okay. I’m not hungry.”

Jane gave him a look. “Really? Haven’t you been here for hours?”

That was the truth, but Stan’s stomach was twisting all over itself again and he couldn’t imagine eating anything. “I had a huge breakfast.” But of course that was a lie. He hadn’t had anything to eat since before coming home last night.

Then came the question - “what happened to your eye?” - and he wanted to scream for everyone to leave him alone, to just let him suffer in peace, but nobody could see that that’s what he wanted. 

“I fell,” he muttered, nearly forgetting how to speak.

Then his boss popped up behind him and nearly scared him out of his shoes. “I thought you ran into a door.”

He caught Jane’s eyes and could see the concern. That’s when he started shaking so badly again, and his heart started thumping away, worse than before. He also noticed that his palms were starting to sweat, and his vision was falling around him. “I fell…” he clutched his stomach as a sharp pain burst into his chest causing him to wince. “I fell into a door.” The panic was coming now, and he couldn’t stop it. He wanted to punch himself in the other eye.He kept seeing his father’s face in his head and couldn’t stop wincing.

“Jane, go empty the trash, please.” His boss said before stepping over to him. “Stan…” her voice was soft and Stan wanted to die. “You legally have to take a half hour break. You don’t have to eat. You can just go relax somewhere, okay?” Relax. The word almost made him laugh. He felt like he hadn’t been able to relax in years.

She placed a hand tenderly to his arm, but again the touch made him flinch away and he felt so horrible. “Okay, I, um, I need to go to the bathroom.” Then Stan pushed himself frantically away out from behind the shoe counter and towards the bathroom. He was hardly able to get in and lock the door, his fingers twitching the entire time, before bringing himself over to the toilet and letting himself get sick again. It didn’t matter that there was nothing left in his stomach - it was a reflex that he wasn’t able to avoid anymore. 

Once hidden away in the bathroom, he finally let it all out. The sobs, the hyperventilating, the fear - everything that he had been holding in all day since he had started working that morning. He dug his nail more into the small cut already on his palm, and it started to bleed again, but it didn’t matter. He pushed in more, wanted to get as much of this awful feeling out of him as he could, wanted so badly for this release to be enough. A small amount of blood had started to pool in his palm and he focused on his breathing, making sure he was pulling in breaths as deeply as he could. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed - maybe ten or twenty minutes - but he knew he couldn’t stay in here all day, as much as he wanted to.

He rinsed his face off with cold water. When staring at himself in the mirror, he felt disconnected from the boy he saw staring back at him. _This can’t be me_. Then when he finally opened the door to go back to work, he saw his boss looking at him, but she didn’t say anything right away. She gave him a weak smile and he started doing his work again.

“Do you want to go home?” She whispered to him.

“No, that’s the last thing I want.”

She sighed and seemed relieved. “Jane was asking to leave early, so I’m going to work until close tonight.”

“No,” he jumped in quickly. “I can do it.”

“Are you sure? You… you don’t look great.”

Stan swallowed and bowed his head a bit. “Must have been something I ate earlier,” he lied, knowing that his boss knew he hadn’t eaten anything all day. “I’m okay now. Let me close.”

She looked at him again, as if she knew exactly what was going on. 

“I need the money. I… busted my car last night.”

“Was this before or after you fell into a door?”

He looked away from her, squeezed his hand with the cut on it tighter inside his pocket. 

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.” She shook her own head. “It’s your business dude.”

He started to feel less heavy when she finally said that, and he felt relieved at the idea of getting home late. Closing the bowling alley was weirdly relaxing, to be all alone in such a large space, and bowling could be cathartic. He finally was breathing normal again.

~

In the last half hour of the night, the alley was completely empty of all customers and employees except for Stan. He changed the music over the speakers and closed out every lane except one. And again, he tried to relax, tried to loosen his shoulders and take deep breaths and not think about what he had to go home to later. He imagined the homes of other families, sitting down for dinner, parents asking their kids about their day, giving soft smiles and gentle touches. And then again he’d see his father’s smile, feel his hand on his cheek right before ramming it into his face. Stan started feeling dizzy and anxious again, so he grabbed a ball and rolled it down the lane as hard as he could. It landed with a loud thud and he took deep breaths after. Half the pins were knocked down. He grabbed another ball and did it again. It felt good to get something out. He tried to let himself escape into the music more. The pins reset and he kept going. He thought he could be there all night, that he’d never have to go home.

A few moments before locking up, he heard the front doors open and he was instantly angry, wondering what kind of person comes into a place right before it’s about to close. “We’re closed for the night, sorry.” He turned and saw Syd standing in front of him.

“Can we talk?” She asked.

Stan put down the ball he was holding as he started feeling the dizziness return. “Sure,” he said, running his hand through his hair. But he instantly regretted it.

“Stan, what the f---”

“Nothing,” he said immediately, angry with himself for forgetting as he smoothed his hair back down in front of his eye. “I fell,” he said, knowing no one else was around to make sure he got his story straight.

But Syd clearly didn’t buy it. She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Okay, maybe that’s the lie you’re telling everyone else, but why don’t you tell me the truth.”

He looked down at his hands, felt the cut starting to scab over and he wanted more than anything to pick it back open again, but he couldn’t do that now. He closed his eyes and tried to picture himself alone again, tried to picture himself with one of those normal families where someone would ask him about his day instead of shoving him against the wall.

“Was it your dad?” He opened his eyes and looked at her, but she wasn’t looking at him. She was staring at the ground and Stan did the same. 

He wanted to ask how she knew right away, if it was really that obvious, if everyone else had maybe guessed and just not said anything or if they all really just believed it was an accident. He wanted to say something to dismiss her question, but he couldn’t bring himself to lie to her. Not when she so easily saw right through it. He couldn’t find any words for her and just bowed his head, trying to keep the tears inside his eyes.

Syd walked closer to him, and he felt stupid for trembling again. Syd was his friend. What was he so afraid of?

“You don’t have to put up with that,” she said sternly.

Stan immediately started shaking his head. “No, you don’t understand…”

“I do. He can’t do that to you. You have to tell someone.”

“No…”

“You can’t just--”

“Stop, please!” He yelled, unable to hold back his tears anymore. Syd was quiet and looked afraid. He felt horrible. He felt just like his father. He tried to take in a breath to steady his voice. “What am I supposed to do?” He was trying so hard not to start hyperventilating again, but it wasn’t easy. He was dizzy again. He finally lost his balance and slid to the ground, Syd quickly kneeling at his side. “He’s all I have,” Stan whimpered. “I can’t lose him, too. I don’t want to get put into the custody of the state or something, or, or…”

Syd reached out to touch him and his first reaction was to flinch away, but when she touched his arm again he leaned into her body as she sat on the floor with him and pulled his quivering body towards hers. “Hey, it’s okay, Stan, just breathe.” She wrapped her arms around him as he put his head against her and just let himself cry.

“I don’t know what to do,” he sobbed. Syd ran her hands through Stan’s hair and he wished it helped as much as he wanted it to. “I don’t know what to do,” he repeated.

“You don’t have to know right now - just breathe.” Syd said again softly. “I’m here with you.”

“Please don’t tell anybody, Syd, please.” Her silence filled him with dread. “Please,” he repeated. 

“Okay, okay,” Syd said as she gently scratched his head. “I won’t.”

He pressed his body more into hers, and tried to focus on her fingers in his hair. He knew the two of them had some shit they had to talk about later, but for now it felt so nice to be touched by someone who meant no harm.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Crown of Love" by Arcade Fire


End file.
